


Brring Brring (that's the landline)

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, just fluff, when they meet one of them is underage but nothing happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 08:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles have been dating for six months and two weeks.It's one in the morning, and the phone rings.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 42
Kudos: 265
Collections: 28 Proposals Fic Fest





	Brring Brring (that's the landline)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is a story about harry and louis, but it is also a story about my parents (a story which I love to mock them for)

It’s nearly one in the morning on a Wednesday night when the phone rings. 

Usually at this late hour, no one bothers to pick it up. They only have the one house phone down in the living room, so if no one’s still downstairs, they’re not going to bother to go get it. Whoever it is can call back a few times if it’s so urgent. 

This week is finals week, though, so for once every seat in the living room is occupied. Liam sits with his feet on the coffee table, half buried beneath a Christmas blanket and a thick calculus textbook that he’s making notes in, a constantly confused expression on his face. 

Niall sits in the wingback armchair with the foldout footstool, the one they found at the secondhand shop and bought without realising they didn’t have a way to get it home. They ended up carrying almost a mile and a half through the middle of campus. Niall doesn’t have the footstool out though, instead he’s cross-legged, hunched over a stack of biology notes with a pile of external sources on the table next to him. 

Louis’ stretched out on the couch, three blankets piled on him because their house is draughty as fuck, trying in vain to read all of  _ Understanding Advanced Music Theory _ before tomorrow’s 8am class. He’s in graduate school, and music theory should be old hat, but he’s stressed out by the unknown.

It’s quiet enough you could hear a pin drop (or a drunk student vomit in the bushes outside), the only ambient noise being the scratching of pencils and turning of pages. So, when the landline rings at full volume from between Niall and Liam, everyone jumps.

“Jesus  _ fuck,”  _ Niall says, notes scattering everywhere. 

“Who the fuck is calling at one in the morning?” Liam groans. 

“Just tell them to fuck off, I’ve got almost a hundred pages yet,” Louis says, bringing his knees up and the textbook mere inches from his nose.

Niall mutters something, but he’s the closest to it so he picks it up, the cord bouncing across the table and scattering his papers even more. “Who the fuck are you?”

Louis snorts. Liam rolls his eyes.

After a beat, Niall holds out the phone. “Louis,” he says. “It’s for you.”

“Tell them I’m not buying,” Louis says.

“It’s your  _ boyfriend,” _ Niall clarifies. 

“Christ, alright,” Louis says, setting his textbook aside and gathering his many, many blankets to himself. If there’s one person in the world that Louis is willing to put his textbook down for, it’s his boyfriend Harry, but  _ god _ this is testing him.

Making the trek across to the other side of the living room, Louis settles in a heap with all of his blankets against the side of Niall’s wingback, feeling it creak and lean a little as he does. 

Niall hands down the phone to him, and Louis flips his textbook back open as he says, “Hello Harold.”

_ “Hi Louis,” _ Harry says, his voice tinny over the line. 

“And what on earth is making you call so late on a  _ school night? _ It’s positively scandalous,” Louis says. Niall and Liam steadfastly ignore him to work on their assignments, and it’s not like he could do anything about it anyway - can’t really go far with this phone cord. 

_ “Just was thinking,” _ Harry says, and yawns,  _ “About us.” _

“Oh yeah?” Louis asks, pressing the phone against his ear and the leaning forward  _ juuuuust  _ enough to grab his textbook from where he had left it on the coffee table. “What about us?”

— 

One week on in his assistant teaching gig, and Louis knew he has problems. 

He’d taken to spending a good half an hour doing his hair each morning, shaping it into a perfect quiff that made him feel professional and at least a step above all the teenagers who towered over him. 

(Plus, of course, he showered every day and didn’t smell like armpits or body spray. And he wasn’t covered in acne. He had a bit of concealer in his bag for the bad days just to be sure). 

The problem had turned out not to be being mistaken for a teenager at all. Instead, the problem had a name. That name was Harry Styles. 

At the beginning of class when Louis stepped onto the little stool at the podium that assured he was a head above even the drummers in the back of the band, it wasn’t too hard to get their attention, snapping his fingers like he was a rich man calling back a waiter. When he went through each group of instruments for scales, the trumpets caused no issue. The trombones were a little flat but that was par for the course. The flutes ran fast because they were an impatient gaggle of teenage girls without proper breath control. 

Then came the oboes. 

When Louis raised his hands, the first thing he heard was a jarringly loud duck noise that made everyone else jump. 

The flutists giggled.

Louis tried to not show annoyance on his face as he said, “Try again. From the top.”

He raised his hands again and this time, the oboes made it through with only the normal amount of squeaks. However, as soon as he’d given the signal for  _ instruments down, _ a truly terribly pitched oboe-originated wolf whistle sounded.

“Harry,” Louis said, voice flat as he tried to keep his temper. “If I hear one more sound from your instrument without my signal today, I will personally snap it in half.”

Harry, sitting at the very front of the two rows of oboes because of  _ course _ he was first chair, whispered something about  _ “I know something else I’d like him to snap in half,” _ to the person next to him. Louis didn’t know what that meant, but he did know that he would, at some point, murder this boy. 

Louis’ first day of assistant teaching, Harry Styles had leant over and whispered to the boy next to him that Louis’ ass was stunning. If the comment hadn’t been said by a scrawny little acne-covered band student, Louis might have been flattered. As it was, he went home and found looser pairs of trousers that did not so much show off his assets (which he was generally very proud of, thank you very much). 

Harry Styles was a teenage menace, and it became very clear very fast by his continual comments that he was into Louis. Louis, on the other hand, was very much not into Harry. Which just made teaching all the harder, because Harry made it his goal to get as many cheeky comments in as possible. 

When Louis was done with his three months of student teaching, Harry even attempted to ask him out, saying that he was graduating soon and was planning to attend the same university Louis was at. 

Louis  _ firmly _ turned him down, and figured he would never see him again. 

— 

_ “Just that I’ve known you a long time,” _ Harry says, his voice slow and syrupy.  _ “You know. I know we’ve been dating for only six months, but we’ve known each other for years.” _

“Don’t remind me,” Louis says. “I’d never met such an annoying kid.”

_ “Heeey,” _ Harry complains.  _ “I was an adorable kid. My mum says so.” _

“Your mum lies,” Louis says, his eyes skimming over chapter headings. 

_ “I’m going to tell her you said that.” _

“She’ll believe me over you, she loves me best anyway.” Louis stifles a yawn with his sleeve.

_ “That’s… maybe true,”  _ Harry concedes.

— 

It wasn’t until almost two years later that Louis met Harry again. 

The one quarter of assistant teaching was all he needed for his teaching certificate, and at this point he was looking at applying to the graduate music program at his university. Having been playing the violin since he was strong enough to hold one, he found he’d much rather be playing than teaching others to play, as selfish as that may be.

Harry, it turned out,  _ had _ gotten into his university. Louis found this out accidentally, by having a one night stand with his roommate.

Hooking up with guys was easy, or at least it had seemed that way, and Louis had been doing a lot of it lately. His last relationship had been messy, and this seemed like the best way to keep things from getting messy again. One night of passion and maybe some pancakes the next morning sounded much better than nightly yelling matches about inconsequential things. 

This particular guy, Louis had met up with at  _ Union, _ the one gay bar on campus. He was pretty sure the guy’s name was Logan. When he woke up the next morning, the bed he was in was otherwise empty, with a stickynote on the pillow saying he had a stats class he couldn’t miss. 

Louis had sighed, and pulled on his clothes from the night before, slinking out of the room and looking for a sink to at least wash his mouth out - his teeth felt fuzzy. 

Then, Louis located the kitchenette and walked directly into one Harry Styles.

“Whoa there,” Harry said, steadying him. Louis saw the recognition in Harry’s eyes a moment later. “Oh my god, Mister Tomlinson!”

“Oh for the love of everything holy, I just slept with your roommate, please call me Louis,” Louis said. 

Harry had  _ grown. _ He was taller, with wild curls and broader shoulders. Not that Louis was attracted to him, but he couldn’t deny that the lad had gone through a glo up. 

“Holy fuck,” Harry said. “You slept with  _ Steve?” _

Ah. Not Logan. Steve. 

“Hey, uh, let me make you pancakes?” Harry asked. “I’d love to hear about how you’ve been! Also to probably apologise for everything I might have at one point said to you.”

Louis, to his utter horror, began crying. 

It wasn’t like a  _ big deal, _ he had  _ not _ been emotionally depraved in any way. It’s just that, well, hooking up with one guy after another, none of them had asked how he was. And here Harry was, someone he hadn’t seen in years, offering to  _ make him breakfast _ and  _ talk _ and god, Louis probably needed more sleep. He probably desperately needed more sleep. That’s what Liam always said - that if he was crying, it was simply because he was sleep deprived. 

Harry looked a little horrified as well, eyes wide and brow knitted. “Uh,” he said. “No pancakes?”

Louis nodded emphatically, wiping at his face with his sleeve. “Yes pancakes,” he said. “Please. Sorry. I’m just— probably tired. Sorry.” He sniffled. “Pancakes sound great. As long as Steve isn’t going to be done with his class any time soon, I think I’d rather make my departure before he returns.”

“Think you’re good,” Harry said. “He’s got a double block of linguistics if I remember correctly.”

So Louis let Harry make him pancakes, on a tiny little hotplate because the hob didn’t work, and they talked about trivial things like degrees and visiting families and annoying roommates. Harry was in universiy for a music degree with his oboe. Louis with his violin. There was certainly a bit of awkwardness in the air from having met the way they did, but they were on an equal playing field now, one at the beginning of his undergraduate degree and the other at the end of his. 

It wasn’t until almost a year later that they started dating, though. 

— 

Louis yawns. It’s nearing two in the morning now, and he’s still on the floor with the phone pressed to his ear. Liam seems to be asleep, his face literally in his books, and Louis wouldn’t be surprised if Niall was as well.

_ “And I know it’s a little soon to have been thinking about this,”  _ Harry says, slowly and meticulously, like he’s picking each word by hand, carefully selected. _ “Since we have only been dating six months, but I was talking to Zayn today about where I see myself. You know. In the future.” _

Louis suddenly feels more awake, heartbeat picking up. “Yeah?” he asks. 

_ “Yeah, just… I don’t know, you know? I’ve never had a lot of grand plans for the future. I’m decent enough at playing the oboe that I think I have a chance at the east asian symphony tours this summer with the university, but further than that? Maybe I’m just aimless, other people have their lives planned out but I had never really thought about it until yesterday, never thought more than a few weeks ahead. When my next final is and shit like that.” _

_ Oh god, _ Louis thinks.  _ He’s going to break up with me. He’s finally thought about his future and realised he doesn’t see me in it. Oh fuck.  _

It’s been less than two weeks since their six month anniversary, the only anniversary they’ve celebrated. 

— 

Harry had told Louis to dress  _ just a little fancy,  _ and Louis had had no idea what that meant. He had dressed in black skinnies and his bomber jacket, because honestly he was a university student with no fancy clothes save for his concert suit. 

And then Harry had taken him to… Pizza Hut.

Which, if this were and other guy, Louis would have found incredibly insulting. But for some reason, with Harry, it just felt like a Harry sort of thing to do. 

Then, to Louis’ utter embarrassment and to Pizza Hut’s staff’s fucking delight, Harry pulled a red and white checkered tablecloth from his bag to adorn the table, followed by a vase with a single (fake) red rose. 

“Happy anniversary,” Harry said, pulling Louis’ chair out for him. 

People in the restaurant had clapped.

Louis had never felt so embarrassed.

But also endeared. 

Just a little. 

They proceeded to argue over pizza toppings for the next twenty minutes, until they ended up with a pizza that was split right down the middle with completely different toppings on each side. Harry ate one slice of his side, declared it a mistake, and then asked for a slice from Louis’ side. Louis gave in. They shared half a pizza.

It was sort of romantic, if not for the slices of pineapple and anchovies left between them at the end of the night. 

— 

_ “So yeah. I’ve just been thinking a lot this week, about a lot of things, and about you and I—” _

Louis is pretty sure he’s the only person awake in this house, and when Harry breaks up with him over the  _ phone _ he’s about to scream bloody murder because Niall and Liam had better be suffering  _ with him. _ They have to. It’s in the roommate code.

_ “I wanted to ask… would you like to get married sometime?” _

Louis blinks. 

Louis pauses.

Louis tries to process what just happened.

“Um,” he says. “I mean. Yes?”

_ “Great!” _ Harry says, sounding enthused.  _ “I mean. Not right away, obviously. We’ve got finals this week. But that’s so great! I just, you know, I was thinking about it and I decided I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life without you, you know?” _

“Uh-huh,” says Louis faintly. “Yeah. Um. Yes. I agree.”

_ “Love you, Babycakes. Love you so, so much.” _

“Love you too,” Louis says. Harry might say something else, but Louis doesn’t register it. He puts the phone back in its cradle and looks around. 

Liam is asleep.

Niall is asleep.

The world is very quiet. 

Louis’ boyfriend just proposed to him… right?

Is Louis… dreaming?

He stands, letting the blankets fall into a heap on the floor with his textbook. Louis is very possibly asleep and dreaming right now. They’ve only been dating six months. This couldn’t possibly be real.

(He would, he thinks, like it to be real— but that’s beside the point).

He steps over the mess he’s made on the floor and crosses the room, heading upstairs. He needs to sleep. In the morning… The morning will reveal whether this has actually happened or not. 

— 

Louis’ alarm clicks on at seven in the morning, tuning to BBC Radio 1, where Mike Reed is announcing steady rainfall all over the U.K. and that starting in December his programme will be starting an hour earlier. 

Louis sits up, puts a hand to his face, and realises he is no more clear than he was last night as to whether or not he now has a fiance. 

He gets up and trudges to the shower, letting the warm water wake him up a bit. Throwing on plaid pajama bottoms and a shirt that sort of matches, he laces up his trainers heads to campus in the hopes of grabbing breakfast at a university canteen before his first final.

Christ, finals week. It probably  _ was _ all a fever dream. 

Louis won’t see Harry until their date night on Friday, he’s got his own finals to worry about of course. He wishes he could just pick up a phone and call, but Harry’s rarely in his dorm as it is. 

— 

Three days go by. Louis decides that it was a dream. A nice, happy dream that if they do get engaged one day, he’ll be sure to tell Harry about. Life goes on as normal. Tonight is date night and Louis feels himself buzzing with happy excitement to see his boy. Clearly he’s in love. Why else would he have dreamed something that felt so… real?

He’s just walked out of his last final, filled with the excitement that comes with freedom from classes, when he runs straight into Zayn. Literally. Knocking both of them to the wet, soggy grass. 

“Sorry,” Louis says, scrambling up and holding out a hand to Zayn. “Fancy running into you here, though!”

Zayn takes his hand and hoists himself up with it. “Yeah man,” he says. “Just had tryouts for next quarter’s marching band in Hughes Hall over there.”

“Ah sweet, best of luck to you, mate,” Louis says, feeling very glad he’s already a member of the graduate string ensemble. 

“And you too,” Zayn says. “I mean, you took a big step this week.”

“I… I did?” Louis asks. 

“Yeah, you know,” Zayn says, lowering his voice as if it’s a secret. “Getting engaged? I didn’t know if you were telling people yet, but Harry told me as soon as he got off the phone with you.”

“Oh,” Louis says. “I mean. Yeah. Totally. It’s a huge step.”

_ Holy shit, _ Louis thinks.  _ I’m engaged. _

“Listen,” he says. “Do you happen to know if Harry’s at his dorm right now?”

Zayn nods. “Think so,” he says. “Or he should be heading that way.”

“Thanks man,” Louis claps him on the shoulder. “I gotta go. I’m engaged, you know.”

“I… I do know,” Zayn agrees, shooting him a confused smile.

Louis turns and takes off down the pavement. 

— 

When he gets to Harry’s dorm, he’s very out of breath. After knocking on the door to his room, Louis takes a moment to lean against the wall and recover. 

Harry opens after a moment, smiling wide when he sees Louis on the other side, then frowning at his tired appearance. “Hi love, what’s up?”

“You,” Louis says, putting his hand on the back of Harry’s neck, “proposed to me.”

“I did,” Harry says, putting a hand at his waist. “Was that okay? Are we still good with that?”

Louis leans forward and kisses him on the lips. “It is  _ fine,”  _ he says. “But here’s the thing.”

“Oh no.”

“The thing is,” Louis leans forward and kisses him again. “Who the  _ fuck _ proposes  _ over the phone? Where the fuck is my ring, Harry Styles?” _

Harry giggles madly. “I’ll get you a ring,” he says. “I promise. Once I get money. I have one out of a capsule machine, do you want that? Do you want me to propose again? In front of people? I don’t have the money to do anything fancy. I just- want to be married to you.”

Louis kisses him again. “I’m going to marry you so  _ fucking _ hard,” he says. “As soon as you get me a ring. And next time don’t make it sound like you’re breaking up with me.”

“Sound like  _ what?” _ Harry squeaks. 

“I love you,” Louis says, and Harry returns the kiss with insistence this time. “That’s the point. Get me a ring and let’s get married.”

They eventually make it into Harry’s dorm, but not before drawing quite a crowd of onlookers from surrounding rooms, who may or may not clap as they close the door behind them.

Louis forgets for several days to tell Liam and Niall what happened. That they were there when Louis was proposed to. He blames Harry. He’s going to be telling that story and blaming Harry for a long time. 

It’s out of love. 

**Author's Note:**

> (He proposes again with an actual ring in a much more Official And Romantic Way so that they can tell their family members a cute story and not “my boyfriend proposed to me over the phone” which is only romantic if one of you is out of the country)
> 
> Fic post is [here!!](https://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/623297079808278529/brring-brring-thats-the-landline)


End file.
